


never asked to be your mountain

by SilviaKundera



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Queer Gen, Regret, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-01
Updated: 2004-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-12 19:43:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilviaKundera/pseuds/SilviaKundera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written during Season 3. Michael character piece, with Justin on the outside. It's not that Michael doesn't want to like Justin. It's just that nothing is ever that easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	never asked to be your mountain

It's not that Michael doesn't _want_ to like Justin.

Michael is all for everything in the world, ever, being easy. He's _tried_ , and he thinks that should be good enough, except it isn't, because he's never tried very hard and he knows this. He's _lived_ this, and sore ego, and sore eye, face, jaw, and sore, pelted heart that had something close to liking, but off, and something that got betrayed and battered and killed in the crossfire.

He wants it so bad that he smiles too hard and touches Justin's elbow, clutches tight around Justin's hot, just his size fingers, and tugs. He'll say, "I want to show you something," and he doesn't mean to be thinking of Brian's face when he does it, but he _is_.

Brian likes it and hates it and strangely expects it. This odd not-friendship, unsteady lean of their shoulders and Michael trying so _hard_ as Justin does it like nothing, effortless as he can be with anything. Brazen, stupid young smile -- almost as if he could mean how he's looking.

Pretty golden boy -- and it's not just an empty title. It's light on his smile and his hair, and it's the pink gone missing from the peach of his skin, and it's his _life_. Plating over everything it touches. Soft, bendable, moldable _hold_ on them.

Unmistakable hold on Michael, who wasn't raised to wish the sort of things he wishes, and doesn't wish, and denies, denies, denies.

He wishes he could say, "No, I was wrong about him," (the room would ease and they would laugh, and laugh, and Brian's mouth on Michael's forehead, and Justin's mouth on Michael's mouth, friendly and warm, and the room would be so _bright_ ), but he's never had any concrete idea, one way or another. He just can't _get_ there.

There's something in Justin he can't touch, and that makes him want to -- want that too -- and when he sleeps he's grasping at straws that are sticks, and then wooden, grass shoots that burrow down under his fingernails.

He's so _like_ Justin, so monumentally, self-absorbedly melodramatic (he _knows_ this) that this should be easy. Or, at least, easier.

Nothing like Sisyphus and his uphill, impossible boulder carrying climb.

New Ben-taught metaphor, and isn't it funny, sad, funny, sad, boring and _predictable_ that Michael uses it (everything Ben will teach him, has taught him) to deal with some unreachable, raw edged, can't-have thing.

Michael has never had to learn how to like, and he loves Ben like breathing. Simple, don't-need-to-think-about-it moments.

He loves Ben like he's just been waiting for someone to let him, and Ben _let him_ , and Michael could love him for that, and that alone, if necessary.

Love him for something that Justin just won't _get_ , and some part of Michael should want to care. Some part of Michael should be a good man -- should live up to his imaginary father, his imaginary, impossible heroics, and stolen, rusted medals.

And it's more telling than it should be -- a history spreading backwards of time-worn ribbons on a time-worn mantel, and fading, convoluted, starkly uneven friendship -- and maybe, just maybe, if Michael had something real to fall back on.

Maybe he'd move forward once and a while.

Maybe he'd have less maybes, and more _doing_ , and less fucking _talking_. Less words making moats, bitterness caking under his tongue and flaking off in moments like these:

> Justin's unsteady hand on his shoulder, reflexive too hard grip, and Brian's sharp laughing eyes (cat toying, breaking fragile mouse fingers to fix them later), and if Michael were his _friend_ \--
> 
> Pretty golden _older_ boy, swaddled in sweaters upon sweaters, thick zippered jackets. Proud, naked raised chin -- the kind of pride that has built its way back up from being battered down, peppered with gaping holes and sagging, stubborn foundation.
> 
> And if there was a time to stand behind him then Michael was _in that time_. He could choose it.
> 
> He could, but he won't, and he chuckles through the quiet slip back of Justin's fingers.

 

It's not that Michael doesn't _want_ to like Justin, but he knows what frightens Brian most, more than anything.

Michael can deal with eager, raw, earnestly _forgiving_ boy, but he knows what he does with these sorts dreams and that sort of trust.

Knows how to ask for an inch, and imagine it a yard.

Knows how to ask for too much, and get it, and hate it, and Justin would give, and give, and _give_ , because that's who Justin is.

And this is who he is, and who Brian is, and what they _are_. And no piece of that particular maybe could possibly come to any semblance of good.

 

It's not that Michael doesn't _want_ to like Justin, but he can't afford it.

 

"Sorry," he says (alone with stretched out time and warming beer), and doesn't mean it, and Justin nods before he finishes the word.

Reflexive, resigned nod, and that's what giving up looks like on people who hadn't done that yet. Fresh and still smarting, and Michael has to try to remember the feeling, and. Can't. Can't quite.

And that hurts something somewhere that Michael doesn't examine. Better not to.

Better to keep quiet.


End file.
